Shopping, specifically grocery shopping is a necessary and at times an unpleasant undertaking. For a shopper, frustration can set in as items sought after, go unfound. With the advent of superstores having both grocery and general retail, and thousands of square feet of space through which to navigate, all hope can seem lost-especially when shopping during the post-workday rush.
Having the ability to quickly and easily locate seemingly unfindable items to be purchased and the ability for one to know one's position with respect to such items is highly desirous. Also, the store's quick ability to respond to a shopper's query or call for assistance is paramount in today's highly competitive retail environments. To date though, there has not been an effective, low cost or redundant in-store method that provides stores the knowledge of the shopper's location to be able to provide answers and aid to the shopper.
What is therefore needed is a way to know the location of shoppers in relation to the position of associates, also known as store clerks, and managers to aid shoppers as they shop. What is also needed is a means to know and communicate to shoppers the location of seemingly unfindable products desired by shoppers in relationship to the location of shoppers, so that directions or a map may be provided to shoppers so that said shoppers can find and purchase said desired products. This has been achieved through one or more of the embodiments described below and will now be explained with greater detail and particularity.
The prior art is rife with attempts to enhance the shopping experience between a shopper and a store. Many of these attempts have been oriented to move a shopper through a store faster, help a shopper find items on a store shelf and aid a shopper to check out quickly. Unfortunately, many of these attempts have been highly complex, labor intensive, highly inaccurate in terms of locating shoppers in relation to products, extremely expensive to implement, maintain and/or replace. Often, these attempts have negatively impacted store profits, caused higher store costs passed on to the shopper and have been deemed unreliable and undependable in the daily operation of a store's fast-paced environment.
Enhancing a shopper's experience in a store is laudable. The high cost of devices or methods for such enhancement and their impact on a store's bottom line has often been greatly overlooked by the prior art. In the grocery industry, in particular, profit margins are thin (e.g., often no more than one to two percent of a store's total sales) and are highly susceptible to fluctuations in fuel costs, commodity costs, labor costs and many other costs related to daily operations. Such fluctuations can raise incremental store costs in expected and unexpected ways.
As a result of its thin profit margins, the grocery industry, by and large, continually works to contain its operational costs; i.e., the daily costs to keep open and maintain a store. What is therefore needed is one or more low cost, highly effective, and highly reliable in-store location methods for locating items sought by a shopper, for calculating a shopper's proximity to sought after items and for tracking a shopper's travel through and even outside of the store. It is important that such methods serve to enhance, simplify and expedite a shopper's experience with very little, if any, cost pass-through resulting in higher store prices due to expensive end-user components and very little, if any, negative impact to a store's profit margin. This has been achieved through one or more of the exemplary embodiments described below and will now be explained with greater detail and particularity.
The prior art is rife with attempts to enhance retail management. Unfortunately, many of these attempts have been highly complex, labor intensive, extremely expensive to implement, maintain and/or replace. Often, these attempts have negatively impacted store profits, caused higher store costs which are then passed on to the shopper, and have been deemed unreliable in the daily operation of a store's fast-paced environment. One or more methods to track the location of associates and managers is highly desirable, so that the head store manager and store executives can fully analyze the efficiency of associates and managers as they accomplish their daily tasks within the store. This has been achieved through one or more of the embodiments described below and will now be explained with greater detail and particularity.
Lastly, there is a present need for a better method for managing and controlling shoplifting. Present methods monitor shoplifting through radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on certain more expensive products or through monitoring the activity of people in the store through the use of cameras. What is needed therefore is at least one method for monitoring the locations of shoppers, associates, managers, and vendors as they travel throughout the store so that the store can determine if shoppers, associates and vendors are located in permitted areas of the store. The knowledge of the locations of vendors is important for a variety of reasons. For example, store security personnel would likely find it suspicious to discover the location of a vendor of soft drinks near the display of pharmaceuticals or firearms.
Tracking the locations of shoppers, associates, managers and vendors throughout the store is achieved through one or more of the embodiments of the one or more methods described below and will now be explained with greater detail and particularity.